English Education Professional from Kuwait, Arab Woman

An experienced teacher from Kuwait, I am now earning my Master’s Degree in TESOL at the University of XXXX. I love studying, learning, and becoming a more effective teacher, increasing my potential to contribute to the progressive enhancement of education in my country, Kuwait, for many decades to come. I hope very much to continue my education to the terminal degree, the PHD, and I see your program at XXXX University in Curriculum Studies and Teacher Education (CTE) to be the best fit for my high level of ambition and the plans that I have for contributing to education in Kuwait in the future.

Kuwait is very much in need of well-trained educational administrators, curriculum specialists, and teacher educators with doctoral degrees from advanced programs such as yours at XXXX. Since I am sponsored by the Gulf University for Science and Technology (GUST) in Kuwait, I have a full scholarship to cover the expenses of earning my PHD at XXXX. I am already a member of the faculty at this university and hold the rank of Assistant Professor in the same BA Program where I completed my own undergraduate studies. I appreciate very much how my university is investing in me so that I will serve as a professor upon my return to Kuwait; and I see Stanford as the ultimate preparation for me to be able to make my maximum contribution for many decades to come to our university and our educational system generally speaking.

I admire the faculty at Stanford enormously, the vast range of research undertaken, and especially the work of particular faculty members that excel in the areas in which I hope to continue to focus, and to go on to distinguish myself as an investigator in the area of Curriculum Development and Teacher Education. I especially look forward, for example, to studying under Dr. XXXX since, like her, I place great importance on the dynamics of classroom assessment. I also find the research of Dr. XXXX in the area of credentialing and educational equity to be extremely inspiring and especially relevant for our educational challenges in Kuwait in the area of teacher education.

My long-term objective is to build an active collaboration in terms of research and curriculum design and implementation with the Ministry of Education in Kuwait. The fact that I am a woman rather than a man is fundamental to my central goal of helping to foster greater equality in our educational system, so that girls have similar opportunities as boys in the future, rather than being groomed by the system for a life limited to that of a second-class citizen. I hope to accomplish this through a rigorous focus primarily on public secondary schools and improving the quality of instruction. I also look forward to decades to come designing and managing professional development workshops for teachers. I enjoy teaching very much and also look forward to teaching Education in Kuwait for the balance of my professional career. There are very few women leaders in Education in my country. Thus, my mere presence in this capacity itself helps to achieve progress towards my central goals.

My love for both the English language and education began early on. I was one of 3 students in my high school that received an exemption from the final examination in English. English was always my favourite subject. I basically lived at every book fair the English department sponsored. I am diligent and very hardworking, using my time wisely and efficiently. Very busy with summer session classes to prepare myself as fully as possible for entrance into your PHD Program at XXXX, I could not be more determined and highly motivated to earn my PHD in a world class program such as yours.

What makes me ambitious is thinking thought fulfilling my academic dream and building a career for myself. I now have teaching experience in Philadelphia as well as Kuwait. At UPenn, I am serving as a graduate assistant (GA) and have had extensive training in the area of Conversation Analysis (CA), in particular, which I am convinced has great potential for service in educational research. I look forward to learning the cutting-edge strategies for motivating teachers to think and teach in creative and progressive ways. This is a special problem in Kuwait, especially in the public school system, where teachers tend to simply follow orders and go through the motions rather than engaging with the material and bringing it alive in colourful ways that make a lasting and timely impact on the students, preparing them for success and achievement participating in our global economy. Earning my PhD at XXXX will help me to contribute to important advancements in education, especially public education, in Kuwait, reforming the educational system from within.

I hope very much to see, within my professional lifetime, every public school in Kuwait, if not all schools, completely bilingual Arabic/English, and we have a very long way to go. Thus, I think my background in TESOL will help me to contribute valuable things to Curriculum Design and Teacher Education since language is so fundamental to the kinds of professional contributions that I hope to make in the future. In particular, I hope to learn how to make the most of the fact that we already have a significantly multilingual population in which English is already being used as a lingua franca in Kuwait’s open and diverse communities. Our teachers, however, are in need of more advanced levels of education, guidance, and support and this will be true for the foreseeable future.

Volunteer work has always been central to my life and sense of purpose. Once a year I spend several days packing food for the poor when I am in Kuwait. I was a volunteer assistant this summer for a professor at my university. I will be a Volunteer Research Assistant (RA) this coming Fall semester 2017, interviewing participants, preparing materials, collecting and analysed data, etc. I will also provide Arabic translation as needed. Serving at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, I was a Volunteer Teacher Assistant (TA) this past summer session in which I aassisted the instructor with sending emails to students, collecting assignments, grading assignments, student meetings for the EDUC 528-Teaching Practice summer session graduate course in the TESOL program. I was also a Volunteer ESL tutor for 4 months in Philadelphia for an ELL student from Taiwan and developed teaching materials for conversational English and pronunciation. I was a Volunteer ESL teacher at the Free Library of Philadelphia, where I created weekly lesson plans and materials for adult international students with various L1s; and I also translated from English to Arabic free of charge. Finally, for my fieldwork, I reviewed proposals for the 38th Annual Ethnography in Education Research Forum, providing feedback to the organizers in Philadelphia.

I enjoy writing articles in my free time to be published in reputable magazines in Kuwait. I see English language instruction and curriculum development as especially important for diplomacy and peacebuilding in the Middle East. Thus, I feel particularly honoured to be considered for a position in your doctoral program in Curriculum Development and Teacher Education at XXXX, giving my all to these issues of such critical importance for our sustainable development as human beings. Thank you for considering my application.

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Statements of Excellence in English Language & Literature

All of the Statement samples on this web site were written more than 2 years ago and all are anonymous.

Great Accomplishments in English

Few people doubt that William Shakespeare is by far the best writer in English literary history—and that’s no mean feat, given the centuries of English history have been adorned with writers who, even if Shakespeare had never existed, would have placed the UK as the top literary country in the world (yes, the UK is considered a country).

Here are some of the best English writers who would have ensured England’s place at the top of the literature league, even without including the Bard of Avon.

On the Jane Austen Centre’s website, it says: ‘Jane Austen is perhaps the best known and best loved of Bath’s many famous residents and visitors.’

What restraint! –considering that Jane Austen is indisputably one of the greatest English writers ever–some say the greatest after Shakespeare–and certainly the greatest English novelist and one of the most famous English women who ever lived.

William Black was not highly regarded either as a painter or poet by his contemporaries. The reason he was actually disregarded because he was very much ahead of his time in his views and his poetic style, and also because he was regarded as being somewhat mad, due to behavior that would be thought of as only slightly eccentric today– for example his naturist habit of walking around his garden naked and sunbathing there.

Geoffrey Chaucer stands as a great giant of English poetry; his verse is still read and enjoyed today and often adapted for theatre performances; it is full of characters, still recognizable as types we encounter in daily life in spite of having been inspired by people Chaucer observed more than seven hundred years ago.

Charles Dickens was an extraordinary guy; he is best known as a novelist, but he was very much more than that. Dickens was as prominent in his other pursuits, but they were not areas of life where we can still see him today. He is the author of works like Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House and many others (all of them classics).

John Donne must be one of the most interesting writers who ever lived, both as a poet and a man: his life was a colorful adventure, his poems are significant feats of language. Donne was Jacobean writer, more or less a contemporary of Shakespeare, Fletcher and Webster, but very distant from those theatre writers, both regarding his social class and his literary work.

George Eliot was a woman! “George Eliot” was just a pen name for Mary Ann Evans, a novelist who produced some of the major classic novels of the Victorian era: The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, Romola, Felix Holt, Daniel Deronda and her masterpiece, Middlemarch.

It is impossible to overestimate the significance of Eliot’s novels in the English culture: they went right to the heart of the small-town politics that made up the fabric of English society during that time. Her novels were actually quite political, though its not obvious at first glance.

English is often referred to as ‘the language of Shakespeare and Milton’. This is due to the fact that Milton’s poetry is considered the most perfect poetic expression in the English language for four centuries.

Milton’s most famous poem, the epic Paradise Lost is a high point of English epic poetry. Its story has entered into English and European culture to such a great extent.

George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Blair, a twentieth century writer who also worked within journalism; wrote essays and novels; and enjoyed taking part in literary criticism and social commentary.

He was actually famous in all those areas, but is particularly remembered for two of his novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four—both among the most significant works of literature of the twentieth century (and two of the most influential!).

Harold Pinter won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, three years before his death. He enjoyed a career of more than half a century as a playwright, director, actor and writer of screenplays for television and film. He was—without doubt—the most influential English playwright of the twentieth century.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet. He was best known as a literary critic and philosopher during his lifetime.

Coleridge was immensely influential in English literature. He was one of the founders of the English Romantic Movement. When people talk about ‘the Romantic poets,’ Coleridge’s name should springs to mind.

There are other great English language writers closely associated with the English writing scene. Many could naturally have been included in this list (had they been born in England!).

Ready to study these, and many other authors, the English language itself, and its nuances? If so, let us know if we can give you a hand with your personal statement of purpose. That’s our job!